Baghdad car bombs kill at least 57 people

Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad were targeted in yet more bomb attacks.

An Iraqi policeman and civilian inspect the site of a car bomb attack that took place the previous day in Baghdad's district of Sadr City on April 16, 2013. Dozens of attacks across Iraq, including a brazen car bombing on the way to Baghdad airport, struck just days before the country's first elections since US troops withdrew. (AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)

The intensifying sectarian violence in Iraq shows no sign of slowing down. A series of car bombs exploded across Baghdad Monday, killing dozens.

One of those car bombs erupted in the commercial Sadoun Street in central Baghdad, the Associated Press reported. Yet another car bomb exploded in the capital's New Baghdad district as police were waiting for experts to dismantle it.

The attacks occurred in neighborhoods that are known as places where Shiite Muslims live.

The violence is the latest sign of sectarianism in Iraq. Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, has been accused of wrongfully detaining members of Iraq's Sunni minority under accusations of terrorism.

Amid protests in Sunni areas, the Maliki government made some concessions, but Channel News Asia reported that the underlying issues have not been addressed.

Also today, a series of gun attacks occurred in Iraq's disputed province of Kirkuk, and a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul left a police officer dead.

Those areas are home to the Sunni Arab minority, and analysts say that the discrimination Sunnis face has given Islamist militant groups "fuel and room to maneuver," Agence France-Presse reported.